


tell me how love, too, will ruin us

by jamesstruttingpotter



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, M/M, basically an AU of the old guard because that movie made me weak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26759452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamesstruttingpotter/pseuds/jamesstruttingpotter
Summary: Monty's index and middle fingers are stinging with the thwap of his bowstring. Clarke's back is about to hit the wall. Only two of her attackers are fatally injured. There’s no time to look and strategize - maybe Raven’s closer to her than anyone else, maybe his arrows can reach her even though she’s past his range - but there’s no need to. Clarke’s in danger, and the name escapes his mouth without thought.“Bellamy!” he yells.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Monty Green/Nathan Miller
Comments: 6
Kudos: 77





	tell me how love, too, will ruin us

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost - I hit delete instead of edit while trying to fix some minor grammar mistakes :/

Monty doesn’t remember a lot of details about what they all somewhat ironically call his “real life,” the one that he’d had before he’d realized he was immortal and found the others. He remembers being young and poor, desperately so, and remembers wondering why his family was always hungry when their farm had always produced so much. He doesn’t remember his parents’ faces, nor the faces of his siblings, but he does remember how much his father had hated the Japanese, how every adult in his village had worn the same look of exhausted resentment every time unintelligible syllables had filled the air. He remembers a soldier grabbing for his sister, and remembers a bullet finding a home in the base of his spine seconds later. 

That had been the longest time he’d lain dead. He’d dreamt of a blonde, blue eyed woman and a stern, dark-skinned man with a shaved head. Then he’d seen another woman with a grin like a sharp blade, and another man, this one with inky black hair that curled over his forehead. When he’d come to, it’d been nighttime and his mother had been wailing over his body. His father’s had been next to him, still bloody. 

He’d been cast out, of course. No one would have let him survive coming back to life after three hours of being dead. His mother had smuggled him food and sent him on his way, a strange look in her eyes; it’d taken him years to parse that expression as one of fear.

He’d wandered the peninsula for a while, taking odd jobs and always looking over his shoulder. The dreams had continued, until one day the ghosts in them had actually appeared in the fields he’d been working, and he’d realized that if he could see them when he slept, they could see him.

“We want to help you,” the blonde one had said, in objectively terrible Korean, but she’d cut a bloody line across her palm and said, “We’re like you,” as it healed in seconds. Once darkness had fallen, he’d followed them to their hideaway.

“We do good things,” the curly haired man had said there, trying to explain as he built a fire. His Korean had also been awful. “Or at least we try to. We want to try to fix the problems we see.”

“And we’re the only people you’ve got now,” the man with the shorn head had added. There had been a sharpness to him that Monty has only barely gotten used to over time, but it’d been honest. As honest as the rest of them had been, anyway.

He had remembered the look on his mother’s eyes and nodded, slow.

Now it’s been a hundred years since he joined the team, which has been almost enough time to get the general gist of the group dynamic. Raven, with her dangerous smile, takes no shit and has plunged into the twenty-first century’s tech with an almost manic enthusiasm, becoming by default their ops woman, the one who finds jobs for them and makes sure they never make it on anyone’s radar. Miller’s quieter, usually good for a sarcastic quip and a sniper’s precision, meticulous enough to ensure his buzzcut never grows out too far no matter where in the world they are. Monty had spent the first few years of his immortality thinking Miller hated him before realizing that he was just that way with everyone. Bellamy’s loud and take charge, the pistol whip to the face that’ll break your nose, but also the only one who can be counted on to make an edible dinner and force you to eat it, too. Clarke’s the clean shot to the temple, the first one of all of them, and she wears her age like an ill-fitting cloak she can’t take off no matter how hard she tries. She has permanent lines around her mouth, the only hint that she’s not as young as she looks, and her eyes are usually ice blue. Time’s either left something in her gaze or stripped away the shield that had been hiding it in the first place.

The century’s gone by quick, especially after Monty had spent the first twenty years processing what it meant to be _fucking immortal_ , and now he knows these people like the back of his own hand, knows that in the end, they’re all he’s got until the day he finally, _finally_ stops breathing. 

But, again, it’s only been a hundred years. There are still things that can take him by surprise. Some of these are funny, like how picky Miller can be about wine. Some of them are sad, like when he’d found out the reason Raven disappears every year for half of March is because that’s around the time Clarke and Miller had found her, nearly five hundred years ago, and she doesn’t want them to see her mourning her real life. None of these surprises have ever made him question the bonds they have with each other though, the foundation of their group, until Clarke and Bellamy are suddenly fighting.

It actually takes him a while to realize what’s going on, which is a testament to how stealthy the both of them can be when they want to be. He only recognizes what’s going on when the five of them are in New York City to rescue human test subjects from a “multinational drug cartel,” which is what Miller’s calling the Big Pharma company du jour. They’ve illegally sublet a pretty nice loft apartment off Craigslist to keep their names off any leasing paperwork (“New York is so fucking sketchy,” Raven had crowed, delighted) and Clarke’s now in the process of pretending she can make pasta. Monty’s channel surfing while studiously ignoring the way Miller’s sprawled all over the couch, his elbows scant centimeters from his own thighs. Raven, hunched over one of her laptops, is the only one who doesn’t reach for a weapon when their front door bangs open.

“Stole a keycard,” says Bellamy, kicking off his shoes as he rounds the corner into the kitchen, and everyone lets go of their respective pistols and blades. He tosses his gear onto the counter and crosses his arms as Clarke stirs a boiling pot; Monty sees her shoulders tighten infinitesimally and frowns. 

“Gnocchi,” Clarke says, and Bellamy snorts.

“Sure,” he says, and Clarke’s jaw clenches. Raven looks up from her laptop, somehow managing to look both bored and concerned at the same time.

“Can we ease up, I’m trying to unknot a particularly difficult line of code,” she says, and Bellamy holds up his hands in surrender before disappearing into the bathroom. After a short second, Clarke puts down her wooden spoon and heads for the balcony.

“Jesus Christ,” says Miller, before hauling himself up to take over cooking.

“Um,” says Monty, feeling a little like he’s missed a step in a flight of stairs. “What’s going on?”

“Mom and Dad are fighting.” Raven sighs and closes her laptop, as if resigning herself to this conversation. “It happens like once every hundred years or so.”

Miller shakes his head. “You should’ve seen them when we first found Bellamy. Middle of fucking Manila and they wouldn’t stop trying to kill each other in broad daylight. Only got worse once we all learned a common language.”

Monty shuts off the TV and sits up straighter. It’s rare to pry any sort of information on Clarke’s life out of any of them; he still knows next to nothing about her real life, other than that it started a very, _very_ long time ago. “I guess I just thought they always worked well together,” he says cautiously, and Miller and Raven’s laughs are half-amused, half-traumatized.

“Any peace they have with each other was hard-won,” says Miller. He’s digging around in the fridge for something. 

“I guess they were overdue. When was the last time this happened, the 1850s?” Raven asks. “Or maybe it was during the American Civil War.” She mutters something in Nahuatl that Monty can’t follow. “Whatever. It’ll blow over soon.”

Miller emerges with two half-empty jars of Ragu. “I don’t know,” he says, meditative. “The not talking is freaking me out. Usually they just yell at each other until it’s resolved.”

Bellamy chooses this moment to stomp out of the bathroom, dried blood washed off his perfectly healed face. He glares at Miller. “You better not be thinking about using that sauce,” he says, and Miller rolls his eyes.

“There’s tomato paste and garlic in the pantry,” he says, and Bellamy confiscates the wooden spoon from his hands. 

The building they end up breaking into is some tiny, soulless offshoot in an office park in New Jersey. It takes them approximately five minutes to determine the whole place is empty, and another twenty minutes to find a neatly hidden door to a basement level that appears to be three times as big as the office itself. Monty spares a thought for how uncreative some villains can be when they descend to find themselves in a cavernous laboratory area, sparkling silver and glass surfaces nearly overwhelming after the dingy carpet and fluorescent lighting upstairs. He sees nearly arrayed syringes, dimmed computer monitors, and scattered notebooks before Clarke swears from behind him, quiet.

She’s standing by a set of reinforced doors. They separate the lab from what looks like a row of cells, all of which are empty. Monty looks farther down the room to see a cluster of hospital beds, with what looks like metal restraints hanging loose off their sides.

“The security footage,” says Miller, flicking a glance at the cameras hanging from each ceiling corner. Raven’s already tapping away at a keyboard. 

Monty enters one cell to examine the few things left behind. It’s a tiny space, mostly empty, but a nest of blankets huddles on the floor. He prods at it. The scratchy material is cool to the touch.

“It’s been a while,” he says. 

“We need to get out of here,” says Bellamy, knuckles tightening around his gun. 

“Uh,” says Raven, warning clear in her tone, before the door leading upstairs is flung open with a loud crash. She grimaces. “Is it too cliche to say we’ve got company?”

The first volley of bullets shatters the sleek glass cabinetry lining the walls beside her head. Monty ducks immediately into one of the cells and reaches behind him to nock his bow, the polished wood a comforting weight against his palm. The stairwell is probably twenty meters away, an easy distance. He glances around the corner to see Bellamy and Miller already working in tandem, trying to bottleneck the intruders as they stampede down the staircase. He pulls his bowstring taut and exhales once to release. The arrow punches through an exposed throat. Bloody muscle spatters.

They manage to hold long enough for Raven and Clarke to find meager cover behind the few desks scattered around the space, but the intruders are kitted out in combat gear with weaponry to match and won’t be delayed indefinitely. _Mercenaries,_ Monty thinks, grim. He manages to fire off a half-dozen more arrows before Miller and Bellamy fall back and their adversaries flood the first third of the room, a few heading directly toward where he’s still camped out by the cells. 

Time slows down. His gaze sharpens, adrenaline swamping his veins. He’s got half a second to think it’s nearly time to pull out his own gun now that the fight’s moving his way, and another to make sure the nasty gash across Miller’s back is healing the way it should. But Clarke draws his attention before he’s even conscious of why, and the space between firing one arrow and the next allows him to see her handling three, then five, then six men on her own. It’s a precarious position, even for her, and he can see her getting shunted into a corner even as he watches. But it’s the expression on her face that scares him the most: a curious mix of weary fury, hard-edged and brittle. 

The thing about being older than nearly every civilization on Earth is that it teaches you a lot about patience. The thing about knowing that one day the death you die will be your last, and that you’ll have literally no warning until you realize your skin isn’t knitting itself back together, is that it teaches you caution despite your invincibility. Clarke, as the oldest of them, is accordingly the most patient and the least reckless, which is why it feels so wrong to watch her actions become increasingly manic. She’s got a pistol in one hand and her slim knife in the other, and Monty watches as her usual efficient grace unspools into something wilder, unfamiliar. 

His index and middle fingers are stinging with the thwap of his bowstring. Her back’s about to hit the wall. Only two of her attackers are fatally injured. There’s no time to look and strategize - maybe Raven’s closer to her than anyone else, maybe his arrows can reach her even though she’s past his range - but there’s no need to. Clarke’s in danger, and the name escapes his mouth without thought.

“Bellamy!” he yells, and the other man’s head whips around to follow his gaze. A snarl twists his expression before he dispatches one of his mercenaries, brutal and quick; Monty’s arrow takes care of the second one and Bellamy’s sprinting, gun blazing. 

Bullets explode into their targets, gristle and bone splattering everywhere; Monty has a second to register Clarke’s face in the space between falling bodies, feels a tug of confusion at the strange look of disappointment on her features before Miller’s shouting his name and he’s dropping his bow in favor of his handgun.

They win, of course. Raven reanimates after a lucky shot gets her in the chest and she rolls her eyes at Monty’s sigh of relief before punching his shoulder, barely wincing as fresh skin rolls over her exposed muscle. 

“Okay,” says Miller, still panting. He braces a hand on Monty’s shoulder to catch his breath and Monty tries valiantly not to lose his own. “What happened to the people we were here for?”

There’s a silence long enough that the three of them turn to look at the other two. Monty catches the tail end of what looked like a furious nonverbal conversation before Clarke breaks eye contact with Bellamy. “Let’s get out of here,” she says, short. Blood streaks up one side of her face, lurid. The skin underneath is a ghostly white.

Silence crackles between the five of them as they head back to base. Monty can almost feel his questions pressing up against the inside of his skull. Barely half of them have to do with the security footage Raven managed to download. But he bites his tongue as Miller wrangles their car through the Lincoln Tunnel traffic, Bellamy’s jaw taut enough to snap as he stares out the window, Clarke’s eyes closed as she rests her head back against her seat. They get back to the loft just as thunder growls overhead, the smell of ozone thick.

Post-op procedure is a steady, comforting rhythm of familiar actions that helps to soothe the raw edges for now: weapons are unloaded and tucked away, ruined clothing is shed, and vague plans to call out for a pizza are made. Monty gulps down what feels like gallons of cold water in the kitchen, feeling slightly more human with each swallow. He only puts the glass down when Raven emerges from the bathroom in too-big sweatpants, toweling too-wet hair dry. “Saved some hot water for you,” she says, and suddenly he can feel the thin layer of grime occluding every pore on his body. 

He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but it ends up happening anyway. The darkened hallway that leads to the bathroom also leads to the bedroom, and he’s contemplating whether he can get away with stealing someone else’s shirt instead of rummaging around for a clean one of his own when he realizes the light in the bathroom is still on. His feet stop of their own accord once he hears voices emanating from behind the half-closed door.

“Don’t ever fucking do that again.” That’s Bellamy’s voice, harsher than Monty’s ever heard it before.

“You don’t boss me around,” replies Clarke, bone-tired. 

Monty edges a little closer to peer around the door frame. He can’t see either of them directly, but the mirror shows him a partial reflection: Clarke’s seated on the toilet lid, with Bellamy crouching in front of her. He’s got a damp towel in one hand and her chin in the other, and he’s wiping dried blood off her cheeks. Monty has never seen him so gentle, even as his voice echoes against the tile, abrasive.

“I mean it, Clarke.”

“It was a calculated risk.”

“No, it was a death wish.” The towel’s quickly turning rust-red. Monty’s never seen Clarke let anyone else clean her up. “You think you’re the only one who’s got one of those? You’re not special.”

Her laugh is tired too. For all that Clarke’s cynical, she’s determined; it’s jarring to hear her sound so defeated, like she’s minutes away from giving up for good. “I think the problem is that we’re all special.”

There’s a beat. “So, what?” he asks finally, and it’s nearly angry enough to not sound like he’s hurting. “You’re going to pull another 1723?”

Clarke’s face spasms under his fingertips, shocked. “Is that what you think of me?” she asks, and Bellamy’s expression is stormy in the mirror’s reflection.

“At least let us know this time before you go,” he spits out, and makes to stand up.

Monty recoils from the door and hurries away. Their voices continue behind him, quietly seething and barely contained.

They fly into Rio de Janeiro less than a week later. The morning after they land, warm rain breaks over a translucent ocean and drums against their window panes, loud enough to wake Monty from where he’s dozed off. 

The apartment they’re borrowing this time around is tiny, one flimsy wall separating the single bedroom from the rest of the space, and he finds himself curled into a pallet on the floor between Miller and Clarke. The latter is facing the opposite wall, frowning even in sleep; Miller’s fingers nearly brush Monty’s shoulder from where they curve against the floor. Bellamy’s on the far side of the room, the uncharacteristic space between him and Clarke taut despite their mutual unconsciousness. 

The nest of blankets next to Bellamy is empty. Monty gets up quietly to peek his head around the corner. The digital clock above the oven blinks 6:43am in green neon. Raven’s clutching a mug of black coffee and perusing a damp newspaper.

“Egg tart?” she asks him, not looking up, and he rounds the counter to accept her offer. 

“Anything interesting?” he asks after swallowing his first bite.

She makes a face. “I don’t know. Portuguese to me is like trying to read while drunk.”

He snorts. There’s a companionable silence during which Monty savors sweet custard and flaky crust, the beat of raindrops soothing white noise. Once he’s done, Raven nudges the nearly empty coffee pot at him with her elbow and he goes to make some more, rummaging around the unfamiliar cabinets for filters and grounds. Her newspaper rustles occasionally.

He finds what he’s looking for and starts to measure out water. “Raven,” he says, back still turned to her, and she hums. “What happened in 1723?”

He can hear her go still. Water sloshes as he pours it into the percolator, loud and uneven against the steady patter of rain above them. “So that’s what’s going on,” she says finally, flat, and Monty takes an extra moment to make sure he’s pushed the right button on the machine before turning to face her. She sighs at the expression on his face. “I guess you’d find out eventually.”

“Did Clarke… leave?” The thought is so alien to him that it’s hard to even vocalize. Imagining their group without her is one thing, but to think of Clarke as capable of giving up feels akin to blasphemy. _People thought I was a god, once,_ she’d told him decades ago, an ironic, bitter tang to the words; Monty’s only just realizing that maybe he still does. If not a god, at least a holy guide: someone who has walked his path a million times before and is unshakeable for it.

Raven rubs a hand down her face, a rare look of consternation appearing. “It’s complicated,” she says. “Yes. She left. But… it was hard to blame her for it. Miller and I couldn’t.”

“But Bellamy did?”

She shakes her head, slow. “I think he understood why she felt she had to. But to Bellamy, it was the wrong choice. It was almost worse, the fact that he understood. Because he got it, and that meant he knew what he was talking about when he disagreed. And then she left anyway.”

The percolator hisses behind him. “What exactly happened?”

“There was a plague.” It’s rare for Raven to wear her age on her face like Clarke does, but it shines through now as she dredges up these memories for him. “It was in France. You can Google it or whatever. They say a hundred thousand people died, and maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot today. But back then… it felt like no one in the city would live to see the winter.” She stares into the depths of her mug. “It was horrifying. Clarke took it upon herself to be a healer.”

Monty jerks in surprise. “A healer? You mean like a doctor? _Clarke?”_ He’s never seen her so much as glance at a box of bandaids. He thinks of her hands, callused and bloody and clutching her knife.

“Yeah, back then she was still trying.” A ghost of a smile appears on Raven’s face. “You know, to find the reason why she was still alive.”

The cynicism in her voice as uncomfortable as it is familiar. For as long as he’s known her, Raven’s never been too concerned with the whys of being nearly six hundred years old, has always seemed content to ride the train as far as it’ll take her without asking any questions. Monty at one hundred years old is really just a child by comparison, one who’s still grasping at the idea that there has to have been a higher purpose for his inability to die. He can’t fathom giving up that search, even though he knows his companions did a long time ago. But 1723… that wasn’t _that_ long ago. A blink of an eye to Clarke.

“She thought her reason was to heal people?”

“It wasn’t a bad idea. She used to be pretty good at it.” The percolator hisses again and beeps twice; Monty lifts the mug from Raven’s fingers and pours her a refill. She takes it absently, eyes sightless as they fix on the gleaming countertop behind him. “But this was a disgusting way to die, and we had none of the resources civilizations have today. And our bodies… you know we can handle trauma pretty well. But a quick sickness like that, one that wrecks you from the inside out…” She shakes her head again, almost like a shudder. “Clarke must have died twenty times, each more horrific than the last. And her patients, too, nearly all of them.”

Monty thinks about the guilt that had wracked him a century ago when he’d woken up and realized his father wouldn’t be waking up with him. The feeling had started to fuel him once he had walked through the worst of it; surely, if he’d come back without his father, it was for a reason. It would be cruel, if there was no higher purpose, too arbitrary to be anything but unfair. Monty imagines living that grief twenty times over and feels as though he’s suffocating. It had taken him decades to decide that there had to be a reason he was still alive when his father was not. He can’t fault Clarke for deciding the opposite under her own circumstances.

“You were there?” he asks.

Raven runs a finger along the rim of her mug, a flash of something like regret passing over her face. “The plague started in 1720. After a year or two, Miller, Bellamy, and I were… convinced we could be of better help elsewhere. We heard of a war breaking out between Russia and Persia in 1722, and Miller and I decided to travel to the region. Once the treaty was finalized in 1724, we came back to find Bellamy alone.”

He doesn’t ask what state they found him in. 

“How long was she gone?”

“Ten years. I’ve talked to her about it. So has Miller. We’ve made our peace with it. But we never really thought there was something to forgive. Bellamy, though…” She sighs. “I still don’t know what exactly happened right before she left. They don’t talk about it. But whatever it was, I think she’s been trying to make up for it for a while.”

The sound of rain patters in the space between them for a few minutes. Monty sips at his coffee and remembers the bitter look on Bellamy’s face in that bathroom mirror, cracked open in a way that had reflected Clarke’s expression as she stared back at him. Then there’s a rustling noise from the bedroom and Miller emerges, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and Monty puts his coffee down to find another mug.

Hong Kong is a slower stakeout. Their hotel is old but well-kept, and the five of them claim two rooms with no clear assignment of individuals to specific beds. Monty takes advantage of the long lead times between information gathering to explore the city. He takes unabashed pleasure in visiting the same tiny cafe for milky black tea every morning. He forces Miller to take him to the Museum of Art, despite his complaining that it’ll be his third time visiting. Monty lets his knuckles graze his near an elaborate calligraphy display and watches a secret smile tuck itself into the corner of his mouth. 

Raven occupies her time between hacking federal databases with an old car she sweet talks the hotel proprietor into letting her fix up. Bellamy spends his days with her, usually with a dog-eared novel glued to his hands, and they pass hours in the companionable silence of two people who have known each other for longer than humanly possible. Clarke takes long walks and returns browned and peeling, expression inscrutable behind thick sunglasses. She looks like a college student on study abroad, or maybe a recent grad taking a gap year before starting work, an impression that only solidifies on the nights they go out to rediscover Raven’s favorite bars.

They’re all too old to indulge in dramatics, but there’s an undeniable tension that edges into the room whenever both Clarke and Bellamy are in it. Monty bites his lip against it and hopes for the best, even as the others seem committed to white-knuckling through it. Alcohol helps until it doesn’t, which is probably why Bellamy takes care to avoid anything after the third beer.

Sometime during the third week, Raven unearths a highly classified list of names and confirms the two they’re interested in are still in Hong Kong. Tailing potential targets is never as fun as movies make it look, plus no one in their right mind is eager to sign up for outdoor surveillance during the middle of the monsoon season. Still, Clarke immediately volunteers. This is met with the barest of pauses. 

She catches it, of course.

“Is there a problem?” she asks, gaze fixed on Bellamy, who immediately opens his mouth.

Miller beats him. “I’ll come. There’s no chance they don’t split up at some point.”

Bellamy glares at the floor as the two of them gear up in silence. Clarke clasps Monty’s shoulder briefly and nods at Raven before striding out. Miller meets his gaze with something soft and unguarded before the door slides shut behind him, leaving silence behind. Raven makes sure their trackers are showing up on her monitors before finally tilting her head at Bellamy, a familiar half-distasteful expression on her face.

Both of them are fluent in Spanish, an aching byproduct of colonization that nonetheless has become too convenient for them to ignore. Monty has always felt a sympathetic pang every time he watches their mouths curl around the syllables, an ironic quirk to their lips; he, Miller, and Clarke have never attempted to learn the language and the years have cemented it as a secret only Bellamy and Raven share. It’s a raw wound the two of them won’t let the others patch up, one that won’t completely heal no matter how long they live.

Still, it’s got its moments, and Raven’s never one to pass up an opportunity.

 _“No me puedes mentir, es un secreto que no puedes guardar,”_ she says, and Bellamy doesn’t look at her. _“Lo que temes... necesitas hablar con ella. Nosotros todos debemos hablar. Es posible que discutamos, pero -”_

 _“Basta,”_ he snaps, and she gives him an appraising look.

“This is our decision, too,” she says.

“No, he says, curt. “This has always been her decision. She could - fucking give Miller the slip and disappear in the next 20 minutes, and we’d have no fucking say.”

“We can’t ask her to stay?”

“No.” He stands up from the bed as if he can’t bear to be still anymore, instead pacing the short length of the room. Raven watches him, exasperation visibly mounting.

“No, we _can’t_ ask her, or no, you _won’t_ ask her?”

“Does it matter? If she thinks she needs to go, who am I to ask her to stay?”

“Who are you?” she echoes. “You’re her friend! You’re her best friend, and one of the only four people in the world who knows who she really is. Don’t be an idiot.”

_“If she wants to go -”_

“ _Does_ she want to go?” Monty interjects, and Bellamy looks at him like he’d forgotten he was there.

“I -” He looks thrown. He flicks his gaze back to Raven in a way that reminds Monty, sharply but painlessly, that they’ve been living centuries together without him. 

“Look,” says Raven. “Frankly, I don’t disagree with her. This feels like a losing game most of the time, the work we do. We’ve all thought that. But there’s a difference between feeling tired and feeling ready to give it up.” She fixes Bellamy with a hard look. “So Monty brings up a good point. Do you think she really wants to leave?”

Bellamy rubs a hand down his face. Monty tries to remember when the other three had found him. The 16th century? Earlier? The weight of all those years suddenly look like they’re resting heavy on his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he says. “All I know is that I’m not begging her to stay if she decides to go. Not again.”

The next morning, the hotel room door swings open with an electronic beep and Monty half-awakens, hand grasping for his pistol. But the figure that slips inside is familiar, and he registers wet tendrils of blonde hair escaping from their braid before his fingers release his weapon. His head hasn’t even left his pillow; he closes his eyes again, guilty relief at her reappearance mingling with the heavy pull of sleep.

There’s a few rustling noises, followed by footsteps. The thump of a weapon against the credenza. Then a sudden creak from the desk chair at the foot of his bed. _Who was watching the trackers last?_ Monty thinks, muzzy.

“Bellamy,” Clarke’s voice says, and the worn weariness of her tone makes him feel intensely and suddenly as if he’s intruding.

“Have you eaten?”

“It’s five in the morning.”

“I meant last night.”

The unoccupied bed beside Monty’s creaks. Through his lashes, he can see Clarke sitting on the corner of the mattress, back bowed forward as she rests her face in her hands. “Bellamy,” she repeats, quiet.

“I can’t have this discussion again,” he replies immediately, pitched low and intense.

“What discussion do you think I’m trying to have?”

“Really? You think you’ve been that subtle?”

“You think you’re that good at reading me?”

“Yeah, Clarke.” A pause; then, almost feverish: “I think I’m the best at it.”

Silence again. The half-gloom filtering in through the gauzy curtains paints shadows in navy and silver across the floor. “You usually are,” she says finally, and it doesn’t feel like a concession. She rubs her palms down her thighs and stands, some emotion trembling at the edge of her fingers. “Come on. Let’s leave Monty to his sleep.”

There’s a heartbeat, then two, then Bellamy gets up and follows her out of the room.

When he next wakes, sunlight is slicing through the windows. The curtains flutter in the wake of an invisible breeze. A slight figure shifts beyond them from where it stands on the balcony, the sliding door half-ajar. Monty sits up, fingertips rubbing into the corners of his eyes, and the shape coalesces into Clarke, elbows resting on the railing and shoulders hunched. The rest of the room is empty. The clock on the nightstand reads 10:04am.

She doesn’t flinch when he approaches her. “How’d it go?” he asks, and she shrugs.

“We’ll have to keep tailing him.” 

“Miller?”

“He’s getting breakfast.”

Warm air gusts over his face; he pushes hair out of his eyes. Clarke picks at her fingernails, blunt and clean of polish. The smell of car exhaust wafts up from the hot asphalt below them.

“I thought we’d be farther along by now,” she says. The strain in her voice is nearly undetectable.

“We’re getting there,” he says. 

“And then what?”

“What?”

She peels off the curved, white strip of her ring finger’s nail edge. It leaves behind a ragged layer. “What happens after we get these guys?”

It feels like he’s navigating a minefield, suddenly, or maybe fishing for something in the deep. “We’ll go on to the next job, Clarke. Like we normally do.”

She exhales and turns to lean her back against the railing. Her brows have pinched together. Monty watches the profile of her jaw clench before she releases, slow.

“We’re doing what we think is right,” she starts, slow. “And I hope that, in the long run, we will probably have helped more than we’ve hurt. But… when will I _know_ that? When will I look back at what we’ve done and know that we’ve done more good than bad?” 

“Is that what it is?” Monty asks. “You feel like maybe we’re not doing enough?”

Her gaze is unfocused as she stares into their hotel room, dim through the tinted glass. “Maybe. But… I’m just _tired_ , Monty.” She laughs, hollow. “That’s the worst part. I feel like we’re not doing enough, but I don’t want to do more.”

He turns to face her. She looks inexplicably young, suddenly, for all that she’s seen empires rise and fall. Wind stirs at the blonde curls at her temples. “That’s okay,” he says, through the fierce tenderness flooding his chest. “Clarke, it’s been centuries. You’re allowed to feel tired. It’d be stranger if you didn’t.”

She doesn’t meet his eyes. “There’s always going to be something else to do.”

“Yes, there is. But that doesn’t mean you always have to be the one to do it.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not leaving. I can’t do that again.”

“Why not?” He shifts a little in place, nearly torn - but this isn’t a matter of picking sides. “If this is about Bellamy -”

Her head snaps round to face his. “No,” she says, and there’s a bite to her tone that borders on arctic. It reminds him, forcibly and abruptly, of the way her eyes will track Bellamy’s movements sometimes, from deep within the shadow her millennia cast in her gaze. Something about it carries the keen edge of Bellamy’s silence when she speaks, the unbearable intimacy of knowing and being known a heavy weight between them before a word even crosses her lips. Monty isn’t picking sides, but Clarke’s loyalties are clear. 

“No,” she says again, the jaggedness sanded down. Her knuckles loosen their bone-white grip. “It’s not about Bellamy. But I didn’t like who I became when I was alone. And he knows that.”

He can’t imagine asking what she means, and so he doesn’t. A minute trickles by, then two. “Okay,” he says finally. She turns to look at him again. “So don’t go alone.”

“What?”

“Don’t go alone,” he repeats, and a thread of resolve winds its way through his voice. “You said you don’t like who you became when you left by yourself. Take someone with you this time. And… promise yourselves you’re coming back.”

Clarke stares at him. “I can’t ask someone to do that for me.”

A flutter of movement snags at the corner of his eyes. He turns to see Miller slipping into the hotel room, a white paper cup in one hand. He meets his gaze and raises the cup to show him the cardboard sleeve. It’s stamped with a familiar cafe logo. _Milk tea,_ he mouths.

There’s an indescribable feeling taking flight in Monty’s chest. “Sometimes they’re just waiting for you to ask,” he says to Clarke, and reaches across to squeeze her hand. “Sometimes that’s all you have to do.”

Two weeks later, they almost miss their connecting flight in Zurich. The airport’s oddly busy for a Tuesday, and Monty nearly loses sight of Raven as she gets mired in a terse discussion with the agents manning the security checkpoint. 

“Probably has to do with the ungodly amount of tech she insists on carrying with her,” Bellamy mutters, shoving his shoes back on. Clarke checks everyone’s passports again to make sure the dates and nationalities are correct, her bag already haphazardly re-packed and back on her shoulders. 

Miller checks his watch. “Twenty-five minutes until doors close,” he says. 

Another seven minutes pass before Raven finally drags her gear over to where they’ve coalesced near the information screens. “No, I’m not putting them in checked luggage next time,” she says immediately, scowling.

“You can argue that amongst yourselves,” says Bellamy, and there’s an odd lilt to his tone. 

Monty turns to see Clarke handing three passports over to Miller, who accepts them with a bemused look. 

“And where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

“We figured we’d start at Athens,” Clarke replies.

Raven grins at her. “You know, for someone who’s literally centuries old, you have a hard time pretending you’re not excited.”

“Aren’t you guys gonna miss your flight?” Bellamy asks. There’s a little half-smile unfurling across his lips.

Miller checks his watch again. “Fuck, fifteen minutes.”

“So what, we’ll see you when we see you?” Raven asks. Monty frowns.

“Of course not,” Clarke says, brisk. “We’ll meet in a year. Marrakesh escape plan, 1634?”

Miller grins and claps one hand on Bellamy’s shoulder. “Works for us.”

“Have fun, you two,” says Raven, leaning in for a quick hug from Clarke and a punch to Bellamy’s arm. “But not too much fun. You’re too young to be thinking about kids.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bellamy grumbles, before wrapping an arm around Monty’s shoulders. “Good luck. You’re gonna do great.”

“See you in a year,” says Clarke, hugging him too. Her smile when she pulls back is as unguarded as he’s ever seen it. “Thank you.”

“Have fun,” he echoes, gripping her tight, and then the three of them are sprinting through the terminal.

Once they’ve caught their plane (two minutes to spare), weathered the other passengers’ dirty looks, and settled into their seats, Monty buckles his seatbelt and catches his friends’ eyes. Raven’s already helped herself to the complimentary champagne. Miller’s palm is warm where it rests against his, their fingers intertwined. “So,” he asks, and the secret thrums between them like live wire. “What happened in Marrakesh in 1634?”

**Author's Note:**

> Spanish translation:  
> "You can't lie to me, it's a secret you can't keep. What you're scared of... you need to talk to her. We all should talk. Maybe we'll argue, but-"  
> "Enough."
> 
> Based on vague recollections of high school / college Spanish, please correct me if anything's wrong!


End file.
